Are You Having A Bad Day?

Do you feel like your swollen insides have suddenly become too darn heavy for just you to carry around and all you want to do is curl up and let your pillow soak up the darkness in your soul, drop by bitter drop?

Do you think that life is laughing at you with every damn stumble you make, every stupid fall you take and that you really need to tell life to back the hell off and maybe let you live a little?

Have you quite simply…had enough?

Of slowly-crumbling masks and quivering lips and shaky laughs and hearts too big for their brittle bodies?

Hold on, love.

Back up for a second, and just take it all in.

Focus on inhaling as much air as your tender lungs can possibly hold. Feel the oxygen drizzling life into your starving veins, as it tirelessly rushes around every nook and cranny of your broken body.

Then all at once, breathe it out.

Exhale every bloody ounce of melancholy that has seeped its poisonous way into your very pores. Let all the raw, aching bad out and feel your heart float a little with this new-found lightness.

Mix up your favourite drink and gulp it down as fast as you can. There, did you manage to swallow that huge lump in your throat that had lodged itself there for the last few eternities? Good.

Now go and hug your favourite person. Cram all the things left unsaid into that one, crushing hug and let them form a bright, protective cocoon around this human who makes you feel a little more human each day. Feel your stomach starting to glow a little?

Next, I want you to run out to the streets and smile at four and a half people. An old person, a teenager, a child, a middle-aged person and a baby. Watch closely, my friend. Watch their ages slither into meaninglessness as their incandescent smiles warm your heart with the same fierce intensity each time. Happiness is universally ageless, you’ll see.

Okay, we’re almost there. Hop to the nearest store and buy a roll of bubble wrap. Two rolls, if you want. Go back to your room, put your favourite music on whatever volume makes you feel alive, cuddle up under some blankets and get to work. Burst some damn bubbles, already, will you? And with every satisfying little pop, bid adieu to one of those little worries nagging at your neurons incessantly. Let the bubbles work magic on your frazzled nerves, stroking them until they purr like newborn tigers. Make your tantalizingly delicious way through every single one of the bumps and then run your fingers over the bruised plastic. Now that the wind has blown out of its sails, all that rests are the sad, punctured remains. Remind you of someone?

Well, it’s not you anymore. You, my darling, are not a mere boat. You are the wind itself, in all its savage, destructive glory. You’ve got the power to blow yourself off your feet, only if you breathed a little harder. A little stronger.

So go to the window, and look at the sky. Look at the clouds tumbling in on themselves. Look at all the heartbreaking colours: the reds, the pinks, the blues, the oranges, all bleeding into one vast, delightful mess, splattered across the fragile horizon. Not unlike our own scrambled lives, is it? Our lives, which are just as vibrant, and just as muddled—strewn haphazardly across the lives of a thousand other people in a million conflicting ways which we cannot even begin to comprehend. Look, my love, look.